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Regarding privacy - this detailed post describes how someone got access to a twitter employee's email and all that entailed:

"rmation like birth dates, names of pets and other seemingly innocent pieces of data were also found and logged."

Regarding privacy and economics - the way Amazon and Netflix guess what you might like based on what you've bought/rented is interesting.

'Clay Shirky makes the point that time spent online replaces time spent watching TV'

Possibly many have also grown dissatisfied with TV as ennui sets in. It becomes harder to find the original, the stimulating and the good on TV that doesn't remind you of something else. (The same could be said of movies and music too.); particularly as one grows older.

programme 1 power on the web

what about consumer power? all the big brands and enterprises are dealing with this topic as a new challenge. I don´t think that everything has been said about that. It´s a fundamental change for producers but also retailers, etc.. Some have really started to listen to their customers online (e.g. Dell, Starbucks), some have terribly failed (in Germany right now Vodaphone). Some are embracing brand lovers content, some are more than resistant to let consumers participate. There are so many fascinating examples out there. (Examples in separate mail if you are interested.) I think consumers haven´t even realised how big their power potentially is today.

programme 2 the web and the nation state

Over here in Germany we can see a very odd development at the moment. On the one hand all the big parties have pimped up their webites trying to follow Obama´s big success on the web. So you´ve got communities, web TV and so on. On the other hand politicians tend to mention the internet only in connection with child pornography, violent computer games, gambling, cyberbullying, etc.. Especially the debate about a new, absolutely ineffective law concerning child pornography has evoked something like a war of generations. Programmers and other web educated people felt humiliated when some politicians called everybody who has the technical knowledge to overcome digital barriers "pedo-criminals".

So now we have got a huge gap between people who know the web and those who don´t. In addition to that politicians are deeply connected with traditional media who feel that their communicative dominance and economic status is suffering more and more.


programme 3 privacy and economics

At first I thought this was a strange combination. There is so much to say about web economics on its own. But okay, privacy and economics. I am working as head of human resources and have been asked very often whether I google applicants before inviting them. I don´t because I think it´s stupid. I want to see somebody unbiased when I first meet him or her. Much more important than party pictures on the web is that people stick to the NDA they have signed and do not blurb out business secrets on the web.

I am curious whether if in a few years people can still afford not to have a clear online identity, I guess employers will feel much more uncomfortable with someone who cannot be found in Google than with someone who documents every minute of his holidays in Spain.

Today coporations have a kind of privacy as well. Which often leads to confusing experiences when people start a new job. All they know is what they have read on the career page and what the recruiter told them. So they make up their own picture of what it´s like to be working for this company. Now they enter company and very often find something completely different. Corporate blogs and smilar things help a lot preventing new employees to feel disappointed or even deceived on their first day.

programme 4 the web is changing us

The web is changing our expectations fundamentally. We want to be able to get everything whenever we want it an wherever we are. Smartphones are speeding this up. More and more often I find myself feeling frustrated standing in front of an overview map in a department store. Using my laptop or the iphone I never have any difficulties finding what I want. So why can´t they find a way for me to quick and easily find what I want in this damned store?

Being always connected via twitter and facebook changes a lot. You never feel alone. There is always someone responding to you. If I have a problem I simply ask on twitter.

Are relationships becoming more superficial? Today I have a lot more "friends" - online friends. And still I have real friends. With most of them I nearly don´t communicate online at all. I know a lot of details about my online friends: What kind of tea they drink, what TV series they´re following, etc. I don´t know these things about my real friends. Because I know what is really going on in their lives I don´t need to know about all the small bits and pieces. And still I like this illusion of being close online. It makes us all more human even if we do not really know each other.

Hmm, power on the web consumer examples - Ben & Jerry's , , (written up in the Clay Shirky book)...

I promised to give some more examples, so I will.
I guess a good story might be Jeff Jarvis` [Personal details removed by Moderator]experience with Dell. He had a problem, started a blog and finally Dell had to change. And they fundamentally did. But this story has been told too often. I guess a lot of people know his book "What would Google do?"
Of course consumer power is not only consumers commenting on products on amazon. Consumer power is also enhanced by applications like compare everywhere
I like this video because it shows an application that helps consumers compare prices and in the meantime it shows what is happening on the web all the time: Consumers experiencing products and services (here an app) and sharing their experience online. Brands and enterprises start to listen to the consumer online and new business models evolve. Not only business models that work for big coporations but especially business models in niche markets e.g. [Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator] (mix your own muesli).
For the rest of the evening I am going to try to catch up on the discussion since week one... a lot of new impulse!